September 24, 2018

Brett Goes To College

Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer hit the talk shows this morning to defend the piece but it clearly is a break from their usual pattern of multiple victims and multiple allegations, and the contemporaneous corrobaration is very light. To be fair, they also run all manner of strong denials. The real impetus here seems to be that someone contacted the Senate Democratic staffers with this story, rumors were swirling, staffers and other media were investigation, and the confirmation clock was ticking.

Two details that jumped out at me but may get less attention:

An ex-roomie of Kavanaugh's can not confirm this story but has some harsh words about Kavanaugh (my emphasis):

Several other classmates said that they believed Ramirez to be credible and honest, and vouched for her integrity. James Roche was roommates with Kavanaugh at the time of the alleged incident and is now the C.E.O. of a software company in San Francisco. “Debbie and I became close friends shortly after we both arrived at Yale,” he said. “She stood out as being exceptionally honest and gentle. I cannot imagine her making this up.” He said that he never witnessed Kavanaugh engage in any sexual misconduct, but did recall him being “frequently, incoherently drunk.”

And on that hard-drinking theme, we are treated to several examples of the deplorable treatment of drunken young women by drunken young men, centered around Mark Judge specifically of Georgetown Prep boys generally. Left unremarked - of all the alleged incidents on the table, only one involves a sober woman - that would be Dr. Ford.

Obviously, if she had been drinking that does not give anyone the right to assault her. However, Dr. Ford told the WaPo she had just one beer the night of her trauma and hazy memory. PTSD is one explanation of her poor memory, but alcohol is another. Beyond that, guessing at her alcohol use gives us a guess about her credibility.

Well. It's obviously open season on Kavanaugh's drinking habits as a young man. Dr. Ford will remain off limits to the journalists of the MeToo era for obvious reasons. Are likely to learn more this week as this circus passes by? I have learned one thing - two weeks ago I was embarrassed for America by the Senate hearing antics of Cory "I m Spartacus" Booker and Kamala "Guess the name of the lawyer I'm thinking of" Harris. Now, those are the good old days.

MORE: The Times was digging and came up empty. Since these are the folks who ran the LONG front-page McCain piece which TOTALLY WAS NOT alleging an improper affair with a female lobbyist, the dirt here must have been scarce indeed.

Judge Kavanaugh’s prospects were further clouded on Sunday when The New Yorker reported on a new allegation of sexual impropriety: A woman who went to Yale with Judge Kavanaugh said that, during a drunken dormitory party their freshman year, he exposed himself to her, thrust his penis into her face and caused her to touch it without her consent.

In a statement, Judge Kavanaugh denied the allegation from the woman, Deborah Ramirez, and called it “a smear, plain and simple.” The New Yorker did not confirm with other eyewitnesses that Judge Kavanaugh was at the party.

The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.

Comments

I know what you mean't. Look its Booker. He has a history of using imagination as intellect.

Correct. So he lied in his own 1992 Sexual Harassment Mea Culpa. In a sane world the opposition party, The Republicans, would point that out and that lie would help make the point that if sexual assault allegations remembered 8 years after the fact are false, then sexual assault allegations remembered 36 years after the fact are at least as faulty if not more so.

That guy has a way of getting under your skin once he has marked you as his target for the day...and that, by design, provokes us to ramp up the response and then that drags out the attention that he desires.

Heard Selena Zito on HH this am. She thinks the Dems overplayed the Me Too card. She is talking to a lot of women on the ground who are worried about husbands and sons if this smear is allowed to stand. She said basically it is bringing out the mama bears protective mode.

For the record, TK, I don’t think Rosenstein is a white hat and I’m not a proponent of the 4D chess theory, but the argument is now stuck in a loop with no way of proving anyone right or wrong, and between scrolling and killfiling the troll’s idiocies and his cut and paste plagiarisms it was starting to get impossible to read JOM, if I have to killfile and SOB yours and Tom’s stuff too.

That guy has a way of getting under your skin once he has marked you as his target for the day...and that, by design, provokes us to ramp up the response and then that drags out the attention that he desires.

You just don't like having your cynicism and negativity countered by someone who is optimistic and positive.

12 comments too many the other day.
Lurkersusie:
You are correct They thought Kavanaugh would withdraw or that President Trump would pull the nomination. You are right.
She doesn’t want to testify under oath.

Hirono wrote a memo for the organization sent out Monday, saying, “I am angry. I am angry at the way Senate Republicans and Donald Trump’s administration are treating Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who last week bravely came forward to share her story about Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.”

She later asked for recipients to “chip in $3- or whatever you can afford” in order to help MoveOn “keep up the fight” against Kavanuagh, The Washington Examiner reported.

She also said Kavanaugh “knows he is guilty,” even though none of the accusers have testified and their has been no proof of the accusations.

“My question is: What are they trying to hide? What are they so afraid of? If Kavanaugh is innocent, why isn’t he calling for a full investigation to prove it unequivocally? I worry that the answer is that he knows he is guilty. And if that’s the case, we absolutely must do everything we can to stop him,” Hirono continued in the memo.

Where Rush repeats what TC said this morning: "If Grassley doesn’t get a handle on this and just do — and I’ll tell you something else, which everybody also knows. If the Republicans do not get this vote taken and have Kavanaugh confirmed, you can kiss the midterms goodbye. You can kiss goodbye holding the House and you can kiss goodbye holding the Senate. Because whatever the Democrats think of their base, the one thing I know that if you guys fold on this and cave and keep bending over backwards… You’ve done that enough."

Pangs of nostalgia watching the Ladies All-Ireland final. Its an Air Force flight crew tradition that handball be the measure of the crew. My Lord, did I ever spend too much time on the wall. Love the game but not all the movement, exercise, and post-game cramps. I am having Frederick taking up squash at Canterbury. They have 5 championship courts, and its a varsity sport in the winter.

In either case, Jeff Toobin declares that one way or another, that means Mueller is finished.

This issue of who, technically, would be in charge of Mueller is an important one, but it’s not nearly as significant as the broader issue raised by Rosenstein’s likely departure. The President is in charge of the executive branch, and Mueller, as the special counsel, is a subordinate in that branch of the government. If Trump is determined to fire Mueller, or to constrict his investigation in untoward ways, he and his advisers will figure out a way to do it. There is little doubt that the President could ultimately find a compliant Justice Department official to carry out his order of execution. In other words, the massacre this week may lead to another, like the one on a Saturday night in 1973 when Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor. This modern version would be an abuse of power of the most profound sort. Firing Mueller—who has been investigating Trump and his campaign and Administration for a year and a half—would be the very definition of a high crime and misdemeanor, as impeachable offenses are defined in the Constitution. But would the Republicans who control Congress see it that way?

Put another way, the real question is whether there is any political will among the Republicans who run the legislative branch of government to check Trump’s power.

My guess is what happens between now and Thursday matters a lot. It’s possible, for example, that the Trump Administration could implement some plan to put an even more competent hatchet man in place behind Rosenstein (or get him to resign, which would leave more options). Or it’s possible that Mueller has key indictments sufficiently developed to roll them out in the next day or so (though there’s no grand jury before Thursday at the earliest). I think it even possible that Rosenstein will not only be able to explain the NYT report away (in part by suggesting that it’s just an Andrew McCabe attempt to get back at Trump), but also explain why things will be worse for Mueller if he does fire him.

Living in a Newark housing project, Booker likely heard some variation of Top Gun's "I feel a need - a need for speed". And an educated black politico who's still unmarried at age 49 but claims he's not gay is very peculiar. His new teen girl-groping story seems designed to buttress his hetero claim.

If Mazie Hirono didn't have a staff, or at least someone with an IQ over 100, she would be the proverbial mushroom. There is no way in hell that any of those words are directly from her brain cells.

On another note, I went to a university when 3.2% beer was still legal for those 18 to 21. I have seen my share of beer fueled crazy, stupid, too drunk to remember parties, bar sessions, and drunken stunts. I can't even now remember if they ever happened, and who was inolved but I do know they had to happen since the media continues to remind me that is what you do when you are young.

If it wasn't for the Democrats and the media my memories would continue to be supressed.

"The New York Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate Ms. Ramirez’s story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the episode and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself. The New Yorker strongly stood by its article."

They mentioned Avenatti's claims, but called them "salacious" and didn't even bother to try to corroborate them.

I think the Times has figured out that the Dems should have cut bait while they still had a chance that a couple of GOPe squishes wouldn't vote to confirm if it was just Ford's allegation. Now the character smear pile on is just too obvious. If the squishes deny him now they're aligning themselves with icky smear merchants. A bridge too far for Collins and Murkowski I would think. They don't want to have to defend why they're choosing to believe creepy porn star lawyer over a Bush-recommended judge.

Republicans on Senate Judiciary tell Ford's attorney they have hired "an experienced sex-crimes prosecutor to serve as an investigative staff counsel" to question Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh on behalf of the Republican members Thursday.

Grassley's goal, per committee staffer, is "to de-politicize this process and search for the truth – instead of creating a forum for senators to grandstand or launch their presidential campaigns."

Thanking @realDonaldTrump again for being so generous w his time for a friend. His interview on topics ranging from #JudgeKavanaugh to #RodRosenstein to the economy, N.Korea to #PuertoRico was open, unedited & terrific. Thx @POTUS

UC Bearcat. More damn German descendant brew houses, and bars you've ever seen. Our favorite joint was the Dutch Inn in Norwood. A little out of the way but they had more room then those in Clifton.

I am still of the mind that we need to change our laws back to pre-1970 and let adults 18 and over decide if they want to get drunk and kill themselves and friends or just get happy, sexual, and then guilty.

I'm waiting for Rosenstein to submit a memo to Trump explaining why Trump should fire Rosenstein.

Then after Trump fires Rosenstein I'm waiting for Rosenstein to complain to the Media that he never expected Trump to use Rosenstein's memo to fire Rosenstein as the reason Trump fired Rosenstein.

And as for Orrin Hatch expressing anger if Kavanaugh doesn't get confirmed, it was Orrin Hatch who single-handedly saved Lisa Murkowski after she lost the Republican Primary up here in 2010. She had promised to obey the wishes of the Republican Electorate if Joe Miller won, but once Lisa lost that Primary Hatch stepped in and provided no assistance to Miller but instead provided huge encouragement and assistance to Lisa via all means of support from the National Republican outfits in her Write-in campaign. She wound up beating Miller and we will never get rid of her, so if Murkowski cowardly votes against Kavanaugh, her "No" Vote is entirely on that useless [redacted] Orrin Hatch.

"I am still of the mind that we need to change our laws back to pre-1970 and let adults 18 and over decide if they want to get drunk and kill themselves and friends or just get happy, sexual, and then guilty."

I'm in favor of the idea of decreasing the drinking age back to 18, but raising the voting age up to 21 ... or 26, when they get off Mommy & Daddy's ObamaCare and move out of their basements.

Very smart move on Kavanaugh’s part if it is tonight, especially with his wife there. Underscores that he is not the only victim of the Dems’ despicable smears, but wife and daughters are as well—who are women, too. And who are suffering greatly. You can bet Collins et al will be watching.

I was a wild child in college and none of our parties even came close to the shit being claimed by these twats. Same time frame of 79-84.

As a little sister at GT, we used to road trip pledges and little sisters and leave them at the lake or in Athens or some where with zip for cash and wait for them to find their way back. Before cell phones when a phone booth was on virtually every corner.

Wet t-shirt contests at parties and on spring break... that is how I funded a trip to PCB one year.

Good to see agreement on the voting age. I worked as a poll watcher in one of Chicago's river wards when Richard J Daley was mayor. Seeing all the clueless voters being driven to the polls to pull the Democratic lever for $5 made me a life-long cynic

Megyn Kelly
Megyn Kelly
·
Sep 23
A lot of nerve here from the woman who did nothing about this allegation for weeks — and by the way, you don’t know if she is a survivor of an attempted rape. She may well be, but how about WE HEAR THE EVIDENCE FIRST and engage in at least a semblance of fairness?
Quote Tweet

Sen Dianne Feinstein
@SenFeinstein
It’s clear that Republicans have learned nothing over the last 27 years. Bullying a survivor of attempted rape in order to confirm a nominee—particularly at a time when she’s

HeyTK:
Guess what?
I knew you would go after me and not OL.
I gave him two positive words and stated misguided for Rosenstein and wrong in my opinion on Mueller.
Also , last time I checked you can’t tell posters when to post.
One comment too many.
Who died and left you boss?

As an outside observer with no skin in the game, while TomR can be irritating the things that are said about him are usually, not always but usually, a lot worse.

Having said that if anyone wants to be irritating as hell and even a lot worse and make the vast majority of the people here sick unto death of the whole tiresome stupid, idiotic thing, who really has the right to say even one little thing about the entire retarded flapdoodle that drives everyone to distraction?
I certainly would never claim the right to tell the knuckleheads engaged in this endless measuring contest to ever STFU.
Never.
Not ever.